Familiar things

With Alzheimer’s, as with many things in life, the comfort of the routine, the familiar are so important.

Chick is amazing with keeping a routine within which Snowy can be herself as she is “now” or at any particular time on any day. We’ve been rolling between several stages lately, all interesting, different, and grounded from different times in Snowy’s life.

We can’t exactly pinpoint the ‘year’ but can kind of figure out the ‘era’ based on who and what Snowy uses as a reference to how she is looking at her day. Sometimes she is starting from further back than even when I was yet born.

Usually shifts in stage come after months, but lately we’ve had some bouncing around over a period of days. It is interesting, puzzling, sometimes disconcerting, informative, and just more evidence of the mysteriousness of this disease.

Today Chick fixed Snowy’s ‘famous’ squash casserole recipe. Oh. my. goodness. It is so good you want to just swim around in it with your mouth open. And I’m not a big squash lover. It is just GOOD. Any time Snowy was to bring a dish to a gathering or have people to dinner, this one was invariably one that was requested.

Chick bought the fixings the other day so they would be on hand this weekend when her energy level matched the preparation requirements. This morning as Snowy and I were both dozing over Sunday Morning, I heard “chop chop chop chop chop” and soon the aroma of the precooking of the squash was wafting around. More chopping and the onions were ready, as was the cheese, and the cracker crumbs, etc. Eventually into the oven went a goodly sized casserole dish and then the air was TRULY filled with an intoxicating smell.

When served up with some Southern biscuits, this made such a great Sunday brunch, and Chick and I steadily, almost breathlessly cleaned our plates.

Snowy did not. She poked at the serving of squash, the recipe she had made 1,000s of times made no sense to her. She turned her small plate and looked at the biscuit that had been split, buttered and jellied. She looked back at the squash. She rested it back on her chest and looked away.

Chick immediately jumped up and tried to talk through what the squash serving was, pulling aside the onions (cut large as Snowy always did for just that purpose). Snowy doesn’t eat onions but did cook with them. To no avail. Snowy looked then looked away.

Falling back on the routine of now, Chick offered up a slice of key lime pie and Boost, which Snowy reached for and began to tuck into. If she were in one of the earlier-rooted stages, would she have eaten up the squash casserole as being something that was “now” and not just a memory no longer accessible on this train track?

A little while ago the phone rang and it was a call from Johnny, Snowy’s former hairdresser for many years in the crimson nation. He talked first with me, wanting to know how she was doing as she had been on his mind. I asked if he wanted to talk to her and he was afraid that would upset her.

I do not buffer Snowy from those few of her many friends who actually do make the effort to call her – I handed her the phone (putting it on speaker at Chick’s suggestion since then I could help her with the conversation by repeating to her what was said when she ‘missed’ the words or the meaning).

She had a lovely chat, her face all lit up as she found a connection to Johnny still in her head. She asked him every other sentence, “How are you and everyone?” The other sentence she alternated with was, “When are you going to come to see me?” Johnny is a good sport who so long has cared for Snowy, and he played right along not acting put off by the repetition of the questions but just answering them over and over.

After he said “byee” to Snowy, he asked to speak with me again. He said he had been so worried he would upset her, but was so glad to speak with her.

Once he hung up, Chick gestured me back to Snowy’s chair where she sat weeping, a tear trickling down her face. “I miss him,” Snowy wept. She truly wasn’t really sure who “he” was, that had already drifted away. But she did miss something, someone, the idea of being connected to someone who would call.

Snowy doesn’t get many calls, even though through her life she had been a wonderful, wonderful friend to countless people. It’s as if she had already ‘gone on’ and people didn’t want to think about how she is still on the long journey away from them. It probably doesn’t matter as when those who do call, call, she doesn’t really remember that they did once the call ends. Yet, something changes for her, even if she weeps at missing someone, something after. She has a little connection, something that warms under the surface that recognizes not being forgotten.

She is ‘like’ Chick’s and my little girl, and we care for her and love her and do our best to make the world, the day, the era she is in a really good one, and don’t let her slip away under the waters of BEING forgotten.

Ah, one more familiar thing has just occurred: Charlie has found a lizard who was at last drawn out into the sun and onto the window he has stared out of through all daylight hours for the last year and a half for the express purpose of spotting lizards. He is sitting on the back of the big chair in the window in a pool of sunlight deliciously on guard for more lizard memories.